Dallas Morning News
One of Dallas' unhealthiest neighborhoods could soon be home to a multimillion-dollar diabetes prevention and treatment center, under a Baylor Health Care System plan.
Longtime Frazier Courts resident Dorothy Beasley, 69, may lose her home to the planned Baylor diabetes center.
The estimated $7 million, 40,000-square-foot wellness center would be built by Baylor Health Care System in the Frazier Courts neighborhood of South Dallas and is part of a broader Baylor initiative targeting diabetes in that area of the city.
Baylor officials say their approach is innovative because it includes partnerships with a range of stakeholders to combat medical and nonmedical causes of a disease disproportionately afflicting the southern sector.
"We're trying to not [only] treat symptoms, and a lot of times diabetes – the disease of diabetes – really could just represent a symptom of something more," said Dr. James W. Walton, vice president and chief health equity officer at Baylor.
The goal, Dr. Walton said, is for the center to function as a base for health workers dispatched into the community to provide screening and lifestyle education. Planning is in the early stages, officials said, but the facility would likely include doctors' offices, a gymnasium and exercise facilities. It would also be the home for education on healthy eating, including cooking classes.
"A lot of the work happens away from the center, it happens away from the community, at the school," Dr. Walton said. "We have this vision of block captains, people that work from other locations in the community in order to achieve the objectives. "
But programming based at the center would also focus on factors traditionally outside the realm of most health care systems. For example, governmental entities, nonprofits, religious groups and other community organizations would be brought in to collaborate and combat unemployment, poverty, lack of education and the absence of grocery stores, housing and economic development.
"The problems are so entrenched in the South Dallas-Fair Park area that it's got to be something very comprehensive," said Marcus Martin, director of the J. McDonald Williams Institute, a key collaborator with Baylor on the project. The Institute is the research arm of the nonprofit Foundation for Community Empowerment.
In 2004, the hospital discharge rate per 100,000 residents due to long-term complications from the disease was 320 in South Dallas, according to statistics compiled by Parkland Memorial Hospital. The rate was about 110 per 100,000 residents countywide and 120 statewide.
Similar disparities were recorded for short-term complications from diabetes during the same year.
Planning stages
It is unclear where in the Frazier neighborhood the facility will be built or when construction will begin, officials said. But in addition to the estimated $7 million cost to acquire land, build and outfit the facility, Baylor has pledged up to $15 million for operational costs during the center's first three years, according to a 2006 Baylor report.
The Frazier Courts neighborhood comprises more than 1,100 acres within South Dallas and is roughly bounded by Scyene Road, Fitzhugh Avenue, South Haskell Road and Parkdale Lake.
More than 33 percent of families in that neighborhood are below the poverty line. The jobless rate is above 61 percent, and nearly 60 percent of residents did not graduate from high school, according to 2000 census data.
Longtime Frazier resident Dorothy Beasley, 69, underwent surgery in February to repair nerve damage in her right foot caused by her Type 2 diabetes, the more common form of the disease. Like some of her neighbors, Ms. Beasley said she has heard the buzz about Baylor's plans for her neighborhood.
"It would be a good idea and an improvement for the community," Ms. Beasley said. "And it would just serve real well for everybody. There are others that have it, and once you have a facility that opens, then you can really see the toll it has on different people out here."
Possible site
One possible site for the center includes Ms. Beasley's current home and the American Inn Motel behind her house. That motel was shuttered by the city last year after years of problems with drugs, prostitution and violence.
Frazier Revitalization Inc., a nonprofit formed by the Foundation for Community Empowerment in 2005 to acquire land and plan development, will likely purchase the land for the Baylor project. Officials with that organization attempted to buy the American Inn site at a county auction earlier this year, but were outbid and say they have not negotiated with the new owner.
Wherever the facility is built, health experts say it would give a major boost to the overall well-being of residents in the area. They say that while satellite treatment centers in general are not rare, such a comprehensive approach and investment is.
"Building something in the community is really important," said Dr. Joseph R. Betancourt, director of the Disparities Solutions Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. "It builds trust, and I think you can also address some of the community-related issues that make managing diabetes hard."